


Truants

by pauraque



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Playing Hooky, Unexpected Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: Lily is meant to be in Potions class, but ends up learning something else far more important.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Lily Evans
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29
Collections: Friendship Flash Fall 2020





	Truants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melacka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melacka/gifts).



The autumn wind blew through Lily's hair as she walked on the far side of the lake, idly wending amongst the beech trees whose red and yellow leaves rippled like lapping flames. In fact, they looked so much like fire that when she first caught the faint scent of smoke on the breeze, for a minute she thought it was only sparked by her imagination.

But then it grew stronger, and at last she found its source and was brought up short: Sirius Black sat in the grass, leaning against a trunk and smoking a cigarette. Maybe if she backed off slowly—but no, he'd already seen her.

"They're sending prefects out to collect truants, now?" he asked, more vaguely curious than angry, and took a drag.

"Fortunately not, or we'd never get to class ourselves," she pointed out, crossing her arms over her jumper as she approached him.

"What're you doing out here, then?" White plumes escaped from his mouth and were blown away on the wind.

"Skiving," she confessed. "Same as you."

He gave her a quick, appraising look up and down. "How'd you get away with that?"

A ripple of guilt travelled subtly across her stomach. "I just told them I wasn't feeling well."

"And they believed you?"

"Yeah."

He huffed a grim sort of laugh and tapped the ash from his cigarette onto the ground. "Must be nice."

She considered pointing out that people don't usually think you're lying if you normally tell the truth, but it seemed hypocritical and... maybe too mean. She wouldn't ordinarily worry about that when talking to Black, but without his gang of friends around him, he seemed different somehow. Less cocky, more muted. Like meeting an actor backstage, and finding that they're not at all how they were when performing.

"So what's the real reason you're not in class?" he asked.

Lily flinched, thinking of Severus sitting in Potions right now—and her usual seat empty beside him. But she certainly couldn't tell Black about _that_. "Just feeling down about some things, I guess." She plucked a stray bit of fluff from her sleeve and let it fly away in the breeze.

"Happens to the best of us," Black muttered darkly, and held out his cigarette to her. "Have a drag?"

"No, thank you. It's terrible for your health, you know. Muggles have started printing warnings on the packets."

"Oh, it's not—" His fist closed around the burning cigarette, crushing it, and when he opened his unscathed hand there was nothing there but a singed beech twig. "Just a bit of Transfiguration." He flicked it into the lake.

"That's clever," she said, having to admire the spellwork even if it wasn't put to a use that Professor McGonagall would have approved of. "It even smelt real."

"Yeah." A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "Drives my mother mad." 

Lily's mind touched for a moment on Black's younger brother, a quiet boy always hiding behind his hair at Slug Club meetings. They were so dissimilar, yet for the first time she began to see how they might have grown from the same root.

"Well, it's at least another hour until my next class," she sighed, squinting out across the water to the castle. "Do you mind if I sit here?"

Black looked surprised, but jerked his chin towards the spot beside him. "Go on, then." And as she settled herself at the foot of the tree, pulling her jumper over her chilly knees, he added: "You're not like I thought you were."

She raised an eyebrow. "Is that a compliment?"

"Might be," he chuckled.

"Funny you say so. You're not like I thought you were either," she admitted with a smile. "And that _is_ a compliment."


End file.
